Why it works: Summer savory and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 263 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Roast Pork
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make a stuffing by mixing powdered crackers, cream, eggs, summer savory, pepper, and salt; cook for 10 minutes.
Raise the skin off the knuckle of the pork leg and fill it with stuffing; make deep cuts in the thick part and fill those as well.
Roast
Dust the pork with flour and place it in a roasting pan with 1 pint of water.
Baste the pork often with the drippings while roasting for about 3.5 hours.
Make the gravy and serve
Skim some fat from the gravy, add a little flour, and boil for a few minutes.
Serve with apple sauce or your preferred sauce.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Summer savory + flourtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together263 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together671 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
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Pork + summer savorytop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together239 recipes
Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pork + creamtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,093 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Leg of pork
- Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy over the long, slow roast.
- Powdered crackers
- Bind the stuffing and absorb the cream and egg, giving it body.
- Eggs
- Set when cooked, helping hold the cracker stuffing together.
- Cream
- Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing.
- Flour
- Dusted on the pork and whisked into the drippings to thicken the gravy.
The step that matters
Basting the pork during the roast. Regular basting with the drippings keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly over the long roast, while the pork's interior cooks gently.
Swap the summer savory
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, cream, egg, pepper, flour):
- Nutmegfits about as well
- Summer savorythe original
- Parsleyfits about as well
- Jalapenofits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against pork, cream, egg, pepper, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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